Re: [gNewSense-users] Re: unclear licence of AMSLatex (fwd)

[Sam Geeraerts]

Benedikt Ahrens schreef:
> hello,
>
> the AMS has decided to publish amslatex under LPPL. see david jones'
> message on the bottom.
>
> this concerns future releases only. is this ok for gns? can we keep the
> current package even if it isn't covered legally by this license?

Thanks for following up on this.

Do they say which version of LPPL they're going to use? Both 1.2 and 
1.3a are free software licenses, but according to the FSF license list 
[1] 1.2 can have additional restrictions that make some files non-free.

Would they agree to retroactively add the same license to (recent) 
earlier versions (including the one in gNS 2.x), so that those versions 
become dual-licensed? Even just a short public statement that's not 
(necessarily) legally binding would make me much more comfortable about 
keeping the package in gNS.

As for changing names of modified files: I think Debian has some 
infrastructure to handle all that and all TeX packages have been treated 
as if they were under LPPL, so that won't be a problem. The only change 
we should have to make is to refer to the public statement.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses